*Limit the selfies. If you look exactly the same as your last selfie (yesterday) with the exception of hair #eleventy-six-hundred being moved 2cm to the left, please restrain yourself. You’re the only one who enjoys seeing your new-selfie-of-the-day, so why not just text it to yourself or use it as your personal screen saver or wallpaper. Don’t drag the rest of us into your quest to find your missing self esteem. If you need Facebook LIKES to feel good about yourself, it’s plain and simple… you’re fucked. And, I’m sorry that I had to be the one to tell you.

*Stop posting horrible shit that gives people like me nightmares. This includes but is not limited to photos of torture, animal cruelty, sensationalized fatalities, and accidents. I don’t want to see footage of people getting eaten by Amazon spiders or bursting into flames. This stuff cannot be unseen. Cut that shit out or I will pull the lever to my trap door and drop your sorry ass into the Land of Un-freaking-friended. So, THINK before you press share. Is this REALLY something you want to share with the class or is it possible that you’re just a fucked up deviant psycho who’s in a class (that should be a padded room) all by yourself?

*Post more dog and cat photos. Pets are considerably more like-able than their human counterparts. Pets don’t suck – at least not on purpose. If they suck, it’s 100% likely that it’s their humans fault anyway. Pet photos make me extremely HAPPY.

*Ditto for baby photos. I require frequent baby fixes. Mini-humans make me sqeeeeeeal with DELIGHT. Babies are perfect humans because they act predominantly on instincts and don’t know how to be selfish assholes yet. Babies are the most genuinely authentic beings on the planet. Babies rock.

I’m going to close with the above four potential resolutions, because I believe in quality over quantity. Plus, the first one is bound to result in an entirely new charter of Gina haters.

It’s all good though, because somebody has to say the important things that need to be said.

Happy New Year!!!

I look forward to hoards of photos of your baby kittens who aren’t tortured, dead or on fire and don’t contain twenty-hundred selfies of you posing in the mirror where you forgot to crop the tacky phone out of the photo.

In my humble mom-opinion, the Birdzilla holiday is definitely the King pin of all holiday clusterflucks.

It all starts with the grocery store clusterfluck. I’m referring to the mass of non-regular customers leisurely strolling the aisles with the entire maternal side of their family in tow. Shopping is for active participants only. Spectators are not welcome in the arena… they have no purpose other than to create a clusterfluck in aisle three.

On the other end of the spectrum is the daddy-deer-in-headlights; the lost looking male sent to the front lines to retrieve forgotten items. These guys are like a stubborn hair clog in the bathroom sink… they won’t budge. We’ll call them solitary clusterflucks.

*Note – During non-holiday shopping trips I have compassion for these pitiful creatures, but unfortunately, it’s the holiday season and the only rule of shopping during the holidays is get in and get out… like your life depends on it.

You encounter the extra person clusterfluck as soon as you enter the check–out area which is not so surprisingly bustling with extra bodies much like pesky ants at a picnic. How many people does it take to swipe a debit card? The answer is ONE, meaning all inactive shopping companions should do like a banana tree and LEAVE!

Finally having completed your shopping mission, you push the heavy overflowing shopping cart with-the-bad-wheel to the outermost border of the parking lot where you were forced to retreat. This is appropriately termed the parking-in-BFE clusterfuck. This sucks because you’re a regular customer who’s earned their VIP parking spot.

Also, the more traffic flowing through the parking lot, the more likely some inattentive holiday jackass-in-a-box will pop out in front of your car and end up as a hood ornament. Live hood ornaments are right up there with Rudolph’s antlers tacked to your mirror and/or Santa’s testicles dangling from your muffler.

This is called the tacky car accessories clusterfluck.

Finally, you slide into home base, but when you attempt to unload your gargantuan grocery order, there’s nowhere to put anything because of the kitchen-counter clusterfluck and the refrigeratorclusterfluck.

You saw that one coming, didn’t you?

When food prep commences, the overflowing dirty-dishes clusterfluck is immediately created and will regenerate for another 48-72 hours, making it the biggest clusterfluck of all. I despise washing dishes. I’m a huge fan of serving left-overs on paper plates, which incidentally causes a trash can clusterfluck, but what are you gonna do?

We’re picking our battles here.

Other painful holiday clusterflucks include the obvious dinner table fiasco, where you attempt to squeeze 15 people around an 8 seater table. “No fair… I want to sit near Suzy Lou Hoo!” This is called the intimate-encounter clusterfluck and also the reason I bought the big bottle of vodka.

Then there’s the dreaded people-who-don’t-belong-in-the-kitchen clusterfluck, which is why I leave a bag of unpeeled potatoes on the table. Everyone knows as soon as guests arrive, they immediately invade your sanctuary and try to be helpful.

“Grab a potato peeler. We’ve got a clusterfluck and a half of potatoes to peel,” says me.

To clear up any confusion, the tryptophan found in turkey not only makes you sleepy, it can give you a strong urge to dive off the roof of Macy’s during the Thanksgiving Day parade – right into Underdog’s inflatable ass, which would be affectionately termed the contipated balloon character clusterfluck.

And no, you will not catch me out and about on Black Friday. That’s an entirely separate clusterfluck in itself, worthy of it’s very own holiday book-of-rants.

Stick a spork in me.

This pilgrim is done… at least until the Christmas-time clusterfluck begins.

Click on the link below to receive updates on a fabulously fun mom-authored holiday book due out in 2015 – written by myself and my mommy comrades!

From the moment I brought my first two children home from the hospital, barely 12 months shy of one another… nobody slept. My Irish twins were jacked-up baby Energizer Bunnies in stereo.

*Irish twins- when the same woman produces multiple offspring in a 12 month period through separate pregnancies. This probably causes many women to take up recreational drinking later in life, so I’m pretty sure that’s where the Irish part comes from.

I gave birth to up-all-night babies who quickly grew into up-all-night toddlers who were about as difficult to settle in bed as a pair of adolescent spider monkey’s on crack. I kid you not, my bald tail-less monkey’s would not. stay. in. bed. And yes, I tried everything from warm soothing baths, calming music, and dreadfully mundane bedtime stories to… Benadryl.

Yes, I did.

Don’t go all judgy June Cleaver on me. I was exhaustipated with a capital E. Also, in my defense, as an RN I’d been advised by physicians on numerous occasions to administer this same medication to adult patients FOR SLEEP. I was working in pediatrics at the time, so it was easy to figure out the safe dosage. Unfortunately, medications can have the opposite effect on some people. Particularly, small noisy restless humans between 2 – 3 foot tall whose sole mission is to siphon adult energy. As Murphy’s Law would predict, Benadryl effected my toddler like a double shot of expresso laced with pixie stick powder.

As a result, I quickly came to terms with the reality that there was no magic bullet – NOTHING could guarantee to convert my hyperactive children into sleepy mode at sundown. Colassal bummer. In addition to holding the ever-taxing mom title, I had a full time job. I was so tired it hurt. More often than not, I’d simply give in to exhaustion and assume the vertical-cozy-position next to my bouncing balls of energy, which meant I was out for the entire night… in a bed intended for baby bear.

This moms episode of Sleepless in New York actually took place 18 years ago, before the explosion of social networking and subsequent 24/7 online moral support for Mommy’s-at-the-end-of-their-ropes. Quite frankly, I don’t know how I survived without the almighty Internet life line.

I just do not know.

I recently finished reading the new mom anthology, Motherhood May Cause Drowsiness, which is a funny and heartwarming collection of tales written by kindred sleep deprived mom goddesses. Rest assured, fellow mombies, the sleep-deprived state you’re experiencing is indeed a widespread and universal phenomenon that’s also temporary.

You’ve just got to love nocturnal children.

For me, it quickly became a nightly contest to see who would fall asleep first. Predictably, I was hardly ever victorious. To this day, the same image pops into my consciousness whenever bedtime shenanigans are mentioned. The infamous night I frantically woke to discover my two year old son was MIA, which meant he had escaped from his room and was most likely on a mischievous adventure. At the sight of his empty bed, I instinctually rushed into my daughters room, where thankfully, I discovered them both. She was nuzzled under the bed covers fast asleep and my Energizer Bunny Boy was perched on top of her sleeping figure with the entire contents of the toy box spilled onto her bed. Bizarre, but funny as Hell. He had the Fisher Price farm set up next to her head and was gleefully manipulating the animal figures up and down her arms, making barnyard noises. Moooooooo!!! Cock-a-doodle-doo!!! Apparently, he needed someone to play with and it didn’t matter to him if his playmate was interactive

For the official record, it’s not easy to portray a convincing bad-ass disciplinarian when you’re gasping and turning colors trying to stifle an impending laugh-out-loud-and-slap-your-thigh. Some things are just plain entertaining, especially when you’re exhausted.

The strategy I most often resorted to when attempting to wind down my hyperactive monkey-boy was to force him to lay on the couch and watch National Geographic, while I took care of whatever needed to be urgently attended to – like washing the families underwear, tossing the after-dinner wreckage into the dumpster or mopping up the lake left on the bathroom floor after evening baths. The drone hum of the NG narrators voice was enough to put a herd of elephants to sleep, although predictably, it hardly had any effect on my high strung monkey child who, incidentally, had been diagnosed with off-the-charts ADHD by the tender age of five. I can’t confirm that off-the-charts ADHD is an official diagnosis in the DSM, but I do hereby swear it came out of the psychiatrists mouth.

This particular memory came bouncing back into my consciousness like a baby grenade the moment I sunk my teeth into Motherhood May cause Drowsiness and began to read. I suspect it’s also very likely that I have a touch (or full blown) case of PTSD.

And on the glass-half-full-of-vodka kind of note – the ultimate pay-off for the struggle is that my eldest offspring are now 20 and 21 years old, meaning it’s almost their turn to join the up-all-night watch crew also known as team zombie… and I can hardly wait until they have kids.

Be sure to check out this heartfelt, painstaking and funny new mom anthology! It’s recommended reading for the Hot Mess Mom Club. Welcome!

I’m posting this for those of you who are following and are-not-horrified by the Adventures of ThatGoddamnedCat. This particular episode was tucked away in Junes draft folder somewhere around Father’s Day.

However, this is not exactly a Father’s Day post, because I very wisely had ThatGoddamnedCats testicles decommissioned as a kitten.

God knows one of him is enough.

The world is most welcome!

Anyway,

The serial killing feline asshole… has strucketh again.

In my defense, several weeks ago I swear that I absolutely wrote, “Buy collar with bell for asshole cat” on my TO DO list.

I just hadn’t gotten around to crossing it off yet, and for that I’m very sorry Mr. Rabbit.

May you RIP.

I didn’t actually find him all festively decked out in a party hat waving a magic wand. I took the liberty of adding a few photoshop extras, so he’d appear less gruesome and… dead in a somewhat happier light.

He probably would’ve wanted it that way.

Bunnies are promiscuous party animals from way back.

The quarter however, is the real deal though. The shiny disc, is in fact, 25 cents that I deliberately placed on his shoulder so you could better comprehend just how freaking ginormous bunnyzilla is.

Relatively speaking I mean – in relation to TGC’s body weight.

I’m not exactly sure how many ounces my Jack-the-ripper feline has on this guy, but I’m guessing not too many – making Mr. Rabbit by far his largest kill to date.

I do feel bad about Mr. Rabbit I really do, but nonetheless I’m pretty impressed.

When I carefully instructed my son to bury Mr. Rabbits remains with the 25 cent piece, he wittingly replied, “Good, he’ll need it to pay his toll to the river Styx.”

Me – you don’t say.

This apparently, is a toll paid upon ones demise – in order to travel to the underworld of the afterlife… or something like that.

I shit you not.

My bright offspring are full of obscure trivia.

Who knew?

That guy is damned lucky I found him and thought to provide him with underworld fare.

The moral of the story – never leave home without a quarter in your pocket or it’s possible you’ll be up Shits creek or possibly the river Styx… without a paddle.

Chapter Two – The Unexpected

I bet you weren’t expecting a sequel to “The Adventures of ThatGoddamnedCat- Bobbing for Bunnies in the River Styx, because… neither was I.

I had hoped it was the last we’d seen of Mr. Rabbit after I’d carefully instructed my son to bury him WITH his shiny quarter that-was-actually-toll-for-the-river-Styx.

But nope.

His saga lives on, although you won’t see him again, because he’s vanished.

By vanished I mean Mr. Rabbit has vacated the garden… did like a baby and headed out, blew that Popsicle stand, did like a tree and leaved(?)…

Since I KNOW-for-an-absolute-fact that my diligent children did not let our German Shepherd indulge in a bunny snack that was not a tidy approved canine snack shaped like a bone from a colorful box, I’m going to speculate what happened to him.

You call it denial. I call it creative writing therapy so-I-don’t-wig-the-fuck-out.